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Patricia L. Meek
A Dialogue with Georgia O'Keefe
V.: Georgia Was Here
I.
This is my last visit
to Ghost Ranch, an emergency stop
on my way to the airport
for a postcard of flowers
for my mother.
The gift shop is closed
--COVID-19 precautions.
Through the glass door
I see a dozen or so T-shirts,
hanging
in painters' colors
of turquoise, red-clay, and black.
Each shirt is printed
with the logo
Georgia Was Here.
Your paintings are reproduced and
stacked on the sale table below,
twenty cards deep
next to the lavender soap,
Santa Fe lace,
and a polymer steer head that
glitters
with fragments of glass
beads and faux stone.
Georgia Was Here,
I repeat in my mind.
II.
I want once more
to experience your spirit
as the proof of existence
beyond the veil,
to say goodbye;
I have to let go,
but how can I when
my mother is dying?
I grab
the desert dirt
on the path
you once walked,
summoning,
please--
before my homecoming to the South,
where a machine gives her
the mechanical breath of life.
This time, you do not reveal
your presence,
and my confidence
is shook.
III.
Like all ghosts, returning to a haunting,
I retrace my steps,
to the places where we've met
--searching
Georgia Was Here.
A raven flies by as breeze,
lifting fallen leaves
and settling them back
down. My frenetic grasping
finds only my breath and sweat.
Georgia Was Here.
Like a steam train pulling from the station,
I run past the alfalfa field with the
pressurized sprinklers spitting
an arch of rainbows that
dampen the cracked earth.
Georgia Was Here.
IV.
Someone last year removed
the warning sign for the Black Plague
at the Chimney Rock trailhead.
No reason to frighten the tourists
checking off memorable destinations
on Discovery Passports.
Now there are
no Nike Air shoeprints in the dirt
of recent hikes.
I imagine you laugh
in the space of all this dead silence.
Georgia Was Here.
V.
Georgia Was Here at the hanging tree,
where I pluck a red-hued Chimayo apple.
No, you do not appear,
Georgia O'Keeffe,
not even when I hold up my ruby-fruit prize,
an offering to the Blessed Be.
I carry my apple, the color of life,
to the Labyrinth--that key to go back to the past.
A Painted Lady flits about the left behind
on the invisible breath of God.
Surly, Georgia Was Here
in the temenos, where I
perch my alms on the rock
altar. I walk the rest of the maze,
hoping to open the liminal door.
Still--you do not arrive.
VI.
I trek along
the Black Mesa Trail,
searching for you in the box canyon
where murderers once lurked.
Georgia Was Here.
Above me, the wind moves,
cumulous clouds--the kind of temporal giants
that tell stories with rolling shapes.
Measured in moments,
wayward cowgirls once again ride
on cascading broncos before falling apart.
Their futures approaching
from behind.
Georgia Was Here.
Nature Nagas, with gaping mouths
and hollow eyes,
peer down with the gravity
of uncertain times.
Georgia Was Here.
UFOs flicker
in and out of visibility
from the corner of my eye.
Georgia Was Here.
VII.
Visitations, like billowing dust,
rise and disperse
as I drive toward the two-lane.
Onward to air flights and speed,
where this time
tomorrow
I will stand before
the indomitable truth
of my mother's
dying.
Lower car
window,
slow,
uncurl clenched fingers,
let go--
dust returned to dust.
Georgia Was Here.
©2024 by Patricia L. Meek
Patricia Meek has taught English composition and creative writing, and
holds a BA and MFA in creative writing and an MA in counseling. She is a
psychotherapy telehealth clinician (LPC) in Alamosa, Colorado, residing
in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She uses a multicultural lens to focus on the
interdependency of life and death and mystical experiences accessed in
nature.
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